Post-Nirbhaya, Delhi theatre focuses on women-centric issues

Post-Nirbhaya, both professional as well as amateur theatre in the capital, is witnessing a definite shift towards addressing women-centric issues such as eve teasing, molestation, harassment, sexual assault and patriarchy.

| TNN | Updated: Jun 22, 2014, 18:25 IST

NEW DELHI: Post-Nirbhaya, both professional as well as amateur theatre in the capital, is witnessing a definite shift towards addressing women-centric issues such as eve teasing, molestation, harassment, sexual assault and patriarchy.
Plays such as Sarkari Feminism by the Pandies Theatre Group and Draupadi by Atul Satya Koushik were staged in support of women who had survived gruesome crimes. Even campus theatre, notably Sri Guru Gobind Singh College of Commerce, IP College for Women and Jesus and Mary Convent staged plays on women. Some colleges took the additional step of creating their own websites for signing petitions and taking these issues ahead.

"We should all have a feminist approach, if we want to visualize a better nation," says Sanjay Kumar, director of Pandies Theatre Group, which has been focusing on women-centric plays. He adds, "There is too much misogyny in this country and the problem lies in the overpowering dominance of men. This is one of the main reasons why we stage these plays."

Theatre has given these groups an excellent platform to express the unsaid, but more importantly it has given them the power to act out their opinions and incorporate another point of view too. Kumar's ribald but humorous play, Sarkari Feminism, first takes an irreverent look at commissions and committees appointed by the state to look into women's problems. It then asks: is the intervention of independent groups better than that of the state? Are they more capable of surmounting their class biases and address the issues better? Leaning on the group's incessant work with women in slums and bastis of north India, the play presents stories that scream to redress these issues on their own terms.

On the other hand, Draupadi directed by Atul Satya Koushik, takes excerpts from the age-told story of Draupadi and adds imaginative sequences to bring out the real essence of association between Draupadi and today`s women. The juxtaposing makes this work fit to be called an imaginative re-telling of certain chapters from Draupadi`s life.

The incidents in the play take place in an Indian village in the late 1960s. A bunch of playful females of a large family of Haryanvi rural performers, decide to play Draupadi in the absence of all the males of the family. In the process they discover how closely their lives are a reflection of Draupadi's. This intense story unfolds in a light and seamless manner. Like all other productions of the society, this play also scores high on folk music.

"Everything circles around women. And it's a shame that they are disrespected in our society," says Koushik. He feels it is his responsibility as a theatre artist to bring about awareness among people and he believes that theatre has immense potential to reach out to a large audience and make a difference.

Similarly, taking campus theatre forward is practitioner, director and activist Kuljeet Singh who organizes 'Ateliers', an annual theatre fest which picks out the best of DU plays and stages them for the public. They are then performed in reputed auditoriums such as Kamani Auditorium and Sri Ram Centre.

Others are using internet to spread the message. Aniket Jaiswal, a former member of the Hans Raj College dramatics society, has now started his own YouTube channel ' Old Delhi Films' and has posted videos like ' Real men don't rape and tape' and 'She' which are focused on the ordeals faced by women today.

Theatre has immense potential to bring about a change in society. As US playwright Thornton Wilder once said, "I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share the sense of what it is to be a human being". Eighteen months after the sexual assault and killing of Nirbhaya shocked the nation, Delhi theatre is taking some small but sure-footed steps in that direction.

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